Pet Bear Lv 63 vs Bloodthirsty Werewolf Lv 50

[kazeandi]

Hello, this is a video of my pet Polar Bear, Lvl 63, versus a Bloodthirsty Werewolf, Lvl 50.

Look at the damage numbers.

I used Feed Pet on cooldown and tried Clever Trick 2x. CT is supposed to do a 50 Armor refresh and (insert miracle here).
There was a refresh the first time I used it, but not the second time.
No miracles occurred either.

Apart from that, look at the damage. A pet 13 levels above the enemy shouldn't hit for such tiny amounts.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p8KawmpLlI

I really hope the upcoming fix to Animal Handling (one can always hope, right?) will address the issue.

[kazeandi]

Follow-up video:

Normal fight vs werewolf, not bothering with Animal Handling at all, just having the pet as a kind of mobile dot.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85WEHV9kWuY

[kazeandi]

Follow-up:

Having the pet run in, grab aggro and wait a bit till it's established as tank:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFICQ9p7lug

I saved 3 seconds ^^; by having the pet tank.

[kazeandi]

Fun with the pet's AI:

Note how I send the pet in to one thing, it runs to something different, gets hit by yet something else and runs off into the sunset (Insert cheesy Western tune here).


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_c6DpENm0Q

[Tagamogi]

kazeandi - As another player, I just want to say that I really appreciate you taking the time to do these videos. I was playing animal handling when the pet and aggro changes happened last year, and after filing a couple bug reports, I decided to just move on to another skill since ah the way it was made me want to tear out my hair. So, I definitely admire your persistence in sticking with it. I'd like to go back to ah at some point - hopefully your videos will help the devs in pinpointing some of the problems. Thank you!!

[kazeandi]

I can imagine that between planning, designing, coding, debugging, among other things, in-depth testing of things like balancing would take a back seat. Especially since it's a test version, with players to mention all the rough edges.

Some things in the mid-level and highlevel content probably run on assumptions and calculations, so I thought videos show best what's going on. My hope is that the devs can find out by watching them from their unique POV, with their internal knowledge.

Let's hope they get this skill sorted out. Would be a waste if nobody would want to bother with it.

[Crissa]

Thanks for putting the pieces together and recording it. That's the backbone of testing!

[kazeandi]

I'll have a week off soon (in a week, o-bon holidays), maybe I can make some more then - unless a patch comes out.
Or maybe because a patch came out, to show the beauty of balanced pet class play ;)

Oh wait, Necromancy, Necromancy...

[Dragone]

I do see the issues of AH but what if that's roughly the way it's supposed to be, maybe to devs making them more powerful would tip the scale to a point where using AH would be like soloing with 2 characters.

[kazeandi]

I do see the issues of AH but what if that's roughly the way it's supposed to be, maybe to devs making them more powerful would tip the scale to a point where using AH would be like soloing with 2 characters.

If this is what's intended, then all the time designing and coding the system was for naught, because nobody's actively playing it beyond 50.

Even I have so far been waiting with the unlock 60+. It's a substantial sum. Unlocking every other skill would do more for me, power-wise.

[Citan]

These are very helpful, thanks! What sort of equipment are you wearing in these (most importantly, what animal handling treasure mods)?

[kazeandi]

These are very helpful, thanks! What sort of equipment are you wearing in these (most importantly, what animal handling treasure mods)?

My gear has mainly Fire Magic mods, only very little for AH in these videos:

Shrill Command +21%
Animal Handling Healing +42
Pets regenerate +8 power
Monstrous Rage boosts damage 8%
Sic Em boosts Crushing +13


Let me show you one with pet-focused gear.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-IIp9duup4

This gear has:

Pets deal 13% more damage
Pets gain 27% more XP
Pets gain 5 Armor Absorbency
Pets regenerate 10 power
Pets deal +16 damage
Pets have +97 Armor
Pets earn +18% XP
Pets regenerate 10 power
Pets have +97 Armor
Pet taunt +60%
Pets bypass 12 armor
AH base dmg +6%
Shrill Command +15%

As you can see, it's modded to hell and back and it still takes over a minute for my pet to kill a wolf way below it's level.

[kazeandi]

Made one against a mob in Rahu, only a few levels below my pet, in above gear.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ENTqSA2Poo

[kazeandi]

To give you another fight summary:

This is me in Lycan form, lvl 45, with my bear, with above gear, lvl 63. I'm 18 levels lower, but do 2x the damage my pet does.

https://i.imgur.com/7SbiZnn.jpg

This is my bear, to give you an idea of the boni it receives from my gear.

https://i.imgur.com/MWOWcwE.jpg

And here you can see the damage boost I have as Werewolf (117%):

https://i.imgur.com/dnRWHo3.jpg

With 18 levels below the pet, which I geared for properly, doing double damage, you can clearly see where this is going.
Bear has 160% taunt, but with such an extreme damage difference, it'd need 300% just to catch up and take the lead.
Now imagine my damage once my Lycan reaches lvl 63.

What to use the pet for? It can't hold aggro, so, not as tank. The damage is lower than even Mentalism or Psychology,both of which also provide healing and utility, so, not as damage dealer.

(Also notice how I'm not even using one of the good lycan skills, the damage difference would be even greater)

[spider91301]

never botherd with animal taming cuz i thought if someone found a op way to actually make it usefull it would get nerfed eventually

but now i see i actually might be right


I smell a nerf coming

[kazeandi]

Eh, what's there to nerf? If anything, it needs a buff in the damage department.
Some visual feedback for skills like Clever Trick and a check if it indeed works would be nice.

If it looks like I'd made it work, it's far from how it really plays ;)

[Citan]

Thanks again for the videos!

After a very long search, I found a bug that causes pets' special abilities not to work, and it's fixed for the next update. That will make all pets a lot more powerful. (Not sure how widespread the problem is because it depends on specific networking scenarios between the player and the sub-server... but it's probably pretty widespread, based on the number of reports.)

Since the pets' abilities are currently broken on the live server, I may be the only person that's seen all of them, and I've only tested them briefly myself, so we'll have to see how it feels in the next snapshot.

As for your pet's base damage: I've boosted damage for all pets by a bit in the next update. And I just tried the example in your video (that polar bear against a bloodthirsty werewolf) and it seems pretty effective to me. But I want to clarify that the polar bear is a tanking pet, so it's never going to be a very fast killer, especially if you don't use the damage-boost abilities on it (Unnatural Wrath, Monstrous Rage).

Since it's a tank pet, not a damaging pet, I'm more concerned about whether it can hold aggro than how fast it kills something. I've adjusted the pet's aggro abilities for the next update, and I'd appreciate you trying it out to see how well it holds aggro for you. Including using the pet's abilities -- pets are balanced around the idea that you have decent gear for them and that you use the appropriate AH abilities to help them. For a polar bear you'd want to use Get It Off Me, which boosts their taunt by a huge amount, plus Sic 'Em and Clever Trick, because the bear's special abilities will also boost its taunt. For gear your current stuff seems okay: you'd want +Taunt gear, and stuff to help keep it alive.

A good damage setup should be a DPS pet (a cat or a grizzly) with mods for +base damage, +damage %, and armor-bypass. And using at least Monstrous Rage, Sic 'Em and Clever Trick during combat.

Thanks again, and I'm looking forward to hearing how things play in the next snapshot.

Oh, also: I'm still working on tweaking the pet AI to keep them from getting distracted... that might be ready in the next snapshot, or might have to wait until a future snapshot.

[kazeandi]

I'm currently trying to find a Hissy to tame, been a bit unlucky so far though :)
I also unlocked lvl 70, right now 64, so I'll soon be able to make videos against lvl 70 mobs, which would be a proper test of pet power through all levels.

I'll keep you updated. Thanks for the patch, can't wait for it to hit live :)

[kazeandi]

Did some research and apparently, Tiger and Old Fangsworth have the same damage output Hissy has. Went ahead and tamed a Tiger - now for the grueling task of powerleveling it to make it useful.

I will probably go with 2 templates for support. Druid with a DD cat and Fire with a tank bear. The bear setup will take some time, because I need to have a competitive damage build to test tanking ability properly, whereas a weaker support skill can probably still keep a DD alive (or not, I'll find out).

So far, so good, this is the plan. But as I said, it's gonna take time.