Pet Masters, Oppinion, Ideas and discussion

[RaelCleap]

I will not pose my ideas yet or my point of view until this thread gets going. The main thing I keep hearing in the community is...

Pet masters are OP.

Or

Pet masters are Boring / lack luster.

Now I have heard many points from both sides of the fence. I make this thread for one purpose, to get the communities point of view on pet masters. The strengths, the flaws and ideas and points of view for change if needed for balance or refreshing things that arn't quite as good as they sound on paper.

The devs have made statements they are willing to listen, plus in making such a thread certain bugs unknown may become apparent.

So tell us, what is your evaluation as...

A) A PM player and how you feel the class you play is performing.

B) Someone who fights a PM and your experiance and experiances and how you have learned to deal with PM's

C) Suggested ideas for change if you feel there is a need for it.

D) Pet performance and evaluation. Is it worth the CP investment, why or why not take it?
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“I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best.” ~Oscar Wilde
"Everyone loves to hate a good villain!" Dr. Cleaver

[Kiralio]

In this breath and the previous one I've played every category of T3 class except Survivalists. I've played two petmasters, a Lightspeaker last breath, and a Lich this breath. I've also played a Corruptor and a Doom Howler as far as auxiliary petmasters go.

I don't believe that petmasters are at all broken as a category. They are an essential element of stronghold defense, and a significant asset on offense, but the intended counter to PMs (tank + aura) works exactly as intended in both situations, and they can also be largely negated by intelligent use of potions and armor even if you don't have a tank.

I suspect that most complaints about petmasters are conceptual stuff like "they can get XP while offline!" or "I walked into a ghoul nest and died, wtf" which don't really hold much value.

However, I do think from personal experience that Liches are egregiously superior to Lightspeakers, and while I haven't played a Wyrm Master yet, they seem even worse off. Giving the self-replicating power of Ghouls and by far the best of the three mana-generating abilities (Sorcerer's Might) to one class makes it really hard to justify making a LS or WM from a gameplay standpoint, and then they get very solid and synergistic defensive abilities (aura, simulacrum) on top of that.

Ghouls are also the primary enabler of Corruptor ridiculousness, since they allow them to exceed the soft and hard pet count limitations of their class. (I actually think this is really cool and would hate to see it go, but on the other hand it's also crazy that they can do that and it makes the bias towards Liches even stronger because they're better to steal from.)

[Repth]

A) I love to play WM, specifically using tentacles. I love being able to leave them all over the place. That said, my feelings on them were made very clear in the "tentacle viability" thread, but, for the most part, I'm over it, because you cannot really place a value on being able to leave them behind strategically. It's a playstyle I really enjoy, even if the pets aren't super effective, which I don't believe they should be in the first place because of being able to leave them behind.

B) I leave. Even on my relentless sea NC, sitting there and letting the pets AP out lost its novelty pretty quickly. I'm lucky to play on a connection that allows me to respond to a pet horde before they tick. Sometimes I try to soak damage or pop a few potions but I usually just don't mess with them. The other day, my Engineer walked into a power station to turn the power back on, there was a Lich in there with a huge horde. I flipped the generator back on and left before they attacked me.

C) Edit: I guess I would make tentacles cheaper to summon. Maybe 10 mp.

D) It obviously depends on the pet you're speaking about. To me, it's worth taking because it's a playstyle I choose because I find it fun, even if my pets get killed each AP cycle, which they do for now. Regardless, I like dropping them off in locations. A large pethorde that follows me around feels seriously constraining to me. I'm not even going for a Wrackwyrm this breath because having its AP degrade after each movement just kind of drives me crazy, and therein I see a nice source of balance for petmasters; simply moving reduces your damage output because it drains the pets AP. This promotes a playstyle in which you usually sit around waiting like a spider. Sometimes people get caught in your web, sometimes they outright avoid it, sometimes they kill you and destroy your web, forcing you to start over. It's a very demanding playstyle with very rewarding results (note; not across the board, because that's how balance works). It's not for me and that's why I love the tentacles even though their stats aren't that great; they give me freedom, and that's how I like to play. To each their own.
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hi

[SkullFace]

(A) Not playing WM this Breath, only playing Lich. Mainly due to time constraints. Lich remains very useful for raiding.

(B) Situational. I've killed level 30 Lightspeakers with a Precision of the Assassin Void Walker. All petmasters can be killed but doing so is dependent upon circumstances. Smart attackers can work it out themselves.

(C) WM needs the ability to summon Nether Hounds in a single pass rather than two passes. WM needs one of the two Imp abilities to come as standard with base Imps; probably the Mischievous ability. WM needs all Tentacles to rejuv on a kill as currently it is the only class that has no rejuv pet. Lightspeaker needs a new stance for Sprites that turns off their healing ability (it denies XP to faction healers). Lich needs a change to Fossil summoning conditions. Lich needs the NW-style bonus for summoning in a graveyard. Lich needs access to Nifleheim.

(D) My thoughts:

Wyrm Master - The mobile petmaster. Twisted Leap meshes so well with the schtick. Hounds hit hard, work well even on tough targets but it is tough to build a big pack. Tentacles are fun. Imps are just a poorly-executed CP sink (compare to Sprites) and should be avoided. Acid Blood, Unguis, Translucency, Acid Spittle, Dark Heart are all good in their own way. In short, the "fun" petmaster but for me the least powerful (and I've played one in multiple Breaths).

Lightspeaker - Not played one this Breath with the new T2 Zealotry abilities but I expect it is now improved over my prior experiences. Ridiculously powerful at Level 30. Maxed Sprite / Judgemaster combo is the bomb for factioned raider or defender. I had fun with the Crook, not tried the Sling. In short, the "pure" petmaster due to lack of other abilities.

Lich - The slow march of doom. Upgraded Ghouls and Skeletons are excellent horde pets once the Lich gets going. Sorceror's Might makes the Lich a healer's best friend. Monstrosity is still crippled due to summoning limitations. Wisps / Wights are a pricy second pet but complement nicely. In Breath 3.5 Phylactery seems redundant. Death Touch is a winner come level 30.

All are good in their own ways. None are drastically underpowered but in my experience the WM is a definite second class citizen beside the others and really needs changes.
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Cheers,

Skull Face

[RaelCleap]

I agree with skull face on the Imp assessment. But would an easy fix just to half the cp value of both skills,


Changing Interpose Thrall and Impish Mischief on the imp to 30CP each.
_________________
“I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best.” ~Oscar Wilde
"Everyone loves to hate a good villain!" Dr. Cleaver

[catvom]

(A) Only PM I play is a SH defense lich. I intentionally don't take ghouls (everyone takes em cos they are by far the best pet, so I avoid em ). Barely ever raid cos of random irl schedule, so my main experience is in raid defense, where against a prepared raid team my horde does pretty much nothing, which is just as it should be. The last time I raided (last breath) he was pretty effective. Overall, very happy with the class.

(B) The only character I have had any success taking on a horde with is Bob Ross. Last breath I am pretty sure he was near top of the leaderboard as a Divine Herald (over 1000 pets killed). Basically used Med. soak and Holy Fury to heal and offset the damage taken. It was actually quite effective against hordes < 10. Any more than that and it didn't work.

This breath he is a Seraph again, and only gone up against a horde once. Class functioned as designed and sat there while the horde killed itself on his aura. Cue bitter comments from the PM about why I undid all his hard work, but thats what you get when you leave em on aggressive vs all in a library
Again, very happy with how the tank worked as designed.

Other characters have tried to go up against various PMs and been splattered impressively.

(C) Overall I am very happy with the PM classes. I reckon the WM does need some attention, as an aggressor vs the PM I have always found them to be much easier to deal with than a LS or Lich.

[honestmistake]

I played a WM last breath and didn't enjoy it at all, by the end of the breath I had left him to go idle. For RP reasons I didn't take Hounds and i found it all but impossible to keep a Wrackwyrm for more than an hour or so due to our light-fingered Corruptors. Imps were fun but very expensive for very little actual damage and tentacles just didn't do much at all

This breath I am playing a Lich... Only have access to zombies at the moment and have quickly learned to fear Tank classes. However, raising and mainaining a horde is much easier if you are in the right faction, and much more satisfying regardless. It also gives out masses of XP to faction mates which I am sure tey are very happy about. I may comment more about this in a few levels but at the moment it seems a much more enjoyable skillset.


I've never played an Angelic Pet Master so can't really comment on them.

Overall I would say that the Wym Master needs a lot of love. DH simply isn't a viable way for most of them to build a gorde as faction mates want/need thae MP for themselves and even with willing victims the pets themselves are just not very impressive

[Kharn]

A) Played a Wyrm Master last breath. Wasn't that fun, but making hounds while raiding was alright I guess. Not gonna do that again. (that being playing a petmaster)

B) Always walk around with Holy Affinity and Greater Invul on my IB (I have a feeling my alchemists hate me because I'm always hogging the GInvuls but hey, nobody's ever told me to stop yet), don't really bother with petmasters on my other lads. They're great to unfuck my Redeemed's morality though, sometimes when I kill a sires guy I just use MotP and let the tentacle fix the MO/kill me

C) I'm a dumbass so don't ask me questions

D) Since I've only played a Wyrm Master last breath I guess I could talk about their pets. Wrackwyrms are garbage. Well, maybe not, but they didn't fit what I wanted to do. Tentacles are a meme, if you want to use them more power to you but I don't think they're really effective. I love Hellhounds. Hellhounds are great. Maybe not as good as Judgemasters or Ghouls but few things are better than ghouls anyway. Netherhounds are neat if you are playing a WM like you would a faction defense Lich (but maybe not since they don't have a mundane secondary attack) but otherwise I wouldn't bother with them.

Leap + flying potions is really good though.
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IF WE LOOK AT ROME AND SEE OUR HOME, THE END IS ON ITS WAY

[Sac]

So tell us, what is your evaluation as...

A) A PM player and how you feel the class you play is performing.

I have played a WM in B3 and 3.5. My B3 build was Wrackwyrm, full hounds and full imps. B3.5 build is planned to be Wrackwyrm, full tentacles, hounds but unsure on taking netherhounds.

I can't comment from experience in playing the other classes but seeing the hordes a lich and to a lesser extent the Lightspeaker, can weild, combined with the pet stats, WM feels like the red-headed step-child of the petmasters.

B) Someone who fights a PM and your experiance and experiances and how you have learned to deal with PM's

Trial and error is the way to learn at first. I have successfully tanked reasonable hordes as an Advocate using just potions and also as a dodgy adaption NC with a cast aura. The latter is the far easiest and requires minimal prep.

Fighting petmasters is all in the prep. The same character can step inside and be eaten in 1 tick, or potion/spell-up and comfortably wipe the horde and then kick the petmaster to death.

C) Suggested ideas for change if you feel there is a need for it.

Look it's weird. I've always felt that dealing with pets as the attacking side in a raid was not much more than a formality. "ward down, tank in, wait, ok pets clear, all in...". I dunno tbh. I suppose I just expected them to actually be valuable on defence. They have been in the early game but later on??? I suppose it's a balance (oh god that word again) between making them OP in every circumstance and making them more than just a speedbump on the raid highway.

D) Pet performance and evaluation. Is it worth the CP investment, why or why not take it?

Wrackwyrm- yeah it's ok. Makes a nice damage boost early on and handy to have a different damage type

Hounds- Netherhounds are gold on offence against unprepared targets. I do however find it stupid that improving them to the maximum level actually makes them able to be tanked by a level 10 sorcerer with a cast aura, just by popping 2 potions.

Imps- full tree without Thrall was pointless. Any damage is soaked to the damage floor, the MP stealing on an entire SH of people doesn't even give you the MP to summon one hound and attacking invisibles is great in theory until you realise they can't do enough damage to actually kill anything more than an unarmoured mortal.
Interpose Thrall basically turns them into a 1 (or 2 maximum) AP cost per imp, for anyone that's attacking you. So an attacking raid team might have to spend 20 extra AP to kill you. Oh hang on, unless they have a petmaster in which case the imps won't block any attacks at all...

Tentacles- only using them for the first time now. I like them so far. The basic version is pretty crappy, as expected, but Gnak ones are quite reasonable. They are the set-and-forget weapon and look like they have a few different uses. The fact that you can rejuv them from anywhere is also good. Basically they seem like the "fun" branch of WM.

Overall my main criticism of petmasters is that once you hit 30 you never leave the SH, due to the fear of your pets degrading so much you're not going to be able to maintain them. This bit sucks. Again I'm not sure of a fix for this as a "no AP cost for movement" might be a bit OP.

To be quite honest I'm kicking myself I rolled another WM (because I was familiar with it) instead of making a Lich.
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[kiwimage]

Played a light speaker and a lich last breath and a lich this breath.

A) A PM player and how you feel the class you play is performing.
Lightspeaker. I liked.
Wheel is weak. The Judgemasters and sprites are good. I found upgraded prayer to be a good mp regen skill. a bit random at times but it allowed me to keep 14+ judgies juiced up to last for many days.
Aethersprites are awesome. Don't like or understand why they grant no healing xp. but xp is in my opinion pretty broken across all the classes.
Lightspeaker is very good at healing. Good factions can have a much easier time learning potion recipes with a few sprites out.
Can exceed pet mp cap on rejuv. Meaning LS pets tend to have very high ap/mp values. Unlikely to despawn from exhaustion against dodgy/soaky targets like other pets can.
Basically self contained, not being reliant on others for mp regen or healing so I figure they'd make decent ferals.
Wings are an ok travel skill.

Lich. I like more.
Ghouls are fantastic. The other lich pets aren't ghouls so why bother with them. Will-o-wisps have some utility in detecting invisible characters. They're terrible at healing a lich though. Do very little damage, have low %to hit and low number of attacks.
XP rounding down and ghouls hitting for at most 10hp means <=5xp an attack and close to 1xp given soak means a lot of attacking without reward. Actually makes the harder kills less rewarding. Seraphs can soak ghoul damage to 1hp. That's 0xp a hit.
SM has been fairly crap for my lich. Firstly there's the awful status effect. You cut and can rejuv3-4 pets then what. wait an hour? come back tomorrow? A lich requires logging in a lot more than for a Lightspeaker. If there wasn't a SM status effect maybe it'd be ok. It's an xp boon for healers but not to great for the lich. There there's the wait for healing. In a faction with plenty of healers it might just be waiting for the sm effect to fade. SM is very dependant on just how much healing is available to the lich.
Tap ley line seems a better mp source than SM for my lich.
Death touch is a good innate though it means getting to lvl30 and maybe grinding badges for full damage. High defense is awesome. Can get a permanent aura.
No travel skill.
A lich with 20+ ghouls is a fearsome enemy for pretty much anyone except a conduit in wispform.

B) Someone who fights a PM and your experiance and experiences and how you have learned to deal with PM's
For my seraph. Thought it'd be a bit easier maybe. Perhaps with a bit more soak it will be. Wander up. let them burn on aura.
Other than that. Wizard last breath. Always died. I've experienced wizards being fast enough to take my lich but I was never quick enough to do it to other petmasters
Best anti-petmaster I had last breath was my lich with a larger horde. One on one I'd say a PM with more pet strength is probably best at taking a petmaster down. Ghouls in particular are good at taking WM and LS pets down.

C) Suggested ideas for change if you feel there is a need for it.
Make xp round up? or allow fractional xp gains. My lich is level 22. My conduit 28. The lich reached t3 first. My seraph is 24 but has recently been putting more effort into getting the Exploration Badges than hunting. My lich seems to be getting more xp from reading and healing the few other healable people in the faction than from hunting.
Give skeletons impact damage instead of slashing. Might make them somewhat useful.

D) Pet performance and evaluation. Is it worth the CP investment, why or why not take it?
Wheel of Righteousness/fossil monstrosity. Meh. One pet for lots of cp. Not worth it.
Wheel has less hp than upgraded judgies. 2-3 judgies are better than 1 wheel.
For lightspeaker I'd get upgraded judgemasters (Soldiers of Might and maybe Soldiers of Endurance) and sprites (Brothers bond)
Judgies slay stuff while the sprites keep all the good folk alive. All well worth the cp
For liches. Get ghouls. Best pet in the game.
Ghouls kill and make ghouls.
Non-ghouls steal kills from ghouls.
All the other lich skills are good at least for the +1 damage to death touch.

[Sac]

[MerlintheTuna]

Played an IB in Nexus War (meaning I was on the receiving end of a lot of petshields), WM in B3 and 3.5, active/semi-active raider in all three.

In my experience, petmasters are most weird because interactions with them are always so, so binary. Either you have the tankiness to straight up ignore them, or they obliterate you instantly, with very little room between. (Though I really appreciate that unlike in NW, pets are usually dealing chip damage rather than just clinking off of Carbon Core or Infernal Frenzy.) I'm flashing back to a raid with... OS, I think? earlier this breath that I think I've mentioned elsewhere as well. We as a bunch of T2s hit a faction that had exactly one T3. But that T3 happened to be a Lich, which meant that we were cut to ribbons pretty much as soon as we stepped inside.

And that's kinda weird! If that single T3 had been a Seraph, an NC, a Wizard, or whatever, they'd be scarier as an active defender or would take more juice to bring down. But the raid would've at least happened in some capacity. I recognize that this is tricky; petmasters exist in part to prevent a bunch of squishy raiders from hopping in and clearing out your base uninhibited. But pet mechanics (namely, acquiring your staple pet almost immediately upon T3 and supporting an indefinitely large horde) makes this very swingy, especially at points in the breath where few T3s exist. If Faction A has one T3 that's a Lightspeaker and Faction B has one T3 that's a Revenant, A is straight up invincible to B. And even if B gets 4 more T3s, they're still in trouble if none of them are dedicated tank classes that get their dedicated tank skills immediately. And even if B does get a dedicated tank, if A's Lightspeaker is active, he can step outside and derail things anyway to an extent that other classes cannot.

Is that a problem overall? I'm not sure. But it seems to imply that some amount of level-based scaling (as opposed to CP-based scaling) might be order, whether that means adjusting pet strength directly or horde maintenance. I remember talk a while back about a system where N pets do not suffer from decay and any pets beyond that limit would, which would establish a clearer baseline strength than "However much DH/SM your faction can support."

As for my Wyrm Master experience, it's been... okay. Hounds are good (though Netherhounds requiring rejuvenation and losing both fire immunity and 5% attack seems questionable) and Wrackwyrms are pretty handy. That various classes are passively immune to those three's primary attacks is theoretically weird (IBs to Hellhounds' fire, Revenants & Liches to Netherhounds' death, and Advocates to Wrackwyrms' unholy) since LS and Liches don't have that issue, but I don't think it's ever actually mattered in practice. While tentacles enable a lot of silliness, I haven't taken the plunge on them since they don't seem terribly effective against anyone who would actually provide meaningful XP, and neither they nor imps seem worth the MP (and thus CP) that would otherwise go to hounds and whatnot. (Similar story on my Doom Howler w/r/t chain gremlins.)

Assorted minor quirks:
- Pet masters, despite being all about offline defenses, demand more online time than any other class, since the MP cap is lower than the AP cap. You're missing out on rejuvs if you aren't checking in a couple times a day to refresh pets.
- Pets are by far the most MP/AP efficient way to kill things, which makes spending CP & MP learning spells kind of dubious. Having spellcaster exits that have no interest in casting spells is weird, even if the T2 MP skills are vital to petmasters functioning.
- Pet damage doesn't count towards Damage Dealt, so my WM's stats look rather wiener-ly
- Advancement is slow due to pet XP penalties, which also adds a weird dynamic to raiding. Yes, my hounds will clear the hold better than our attackers, but it also dramatically reduces the effective bounty of killing everybody. This is most pronounced in pet-on-pet fights or when killing T2s & mortals. It'd be nice if the largest XP penalty under a given circumstance applied rather than all penalties stacking on each other. (So pet-on-pet fights would be 50% reduced XP, rather than 50% reduction for attacking a pet times 50% reduction for attacking with a pet.)
- I am super squeamish about DHing people in the hold to beef up my hound squad. I don't want to risk ruining a factionmate's day to have one more hound which will almost certainly not matter if somebody kicks down the door.
- Oh, and I played an Elementalist in NW as well! Totally forgot, probably because she was not very effective at all. Water Breathing was a cute trick, but it basically meant I could go anywhere I wanted and accomplish next to nothing once I got there.

[Ravenik]

With experience as a Lich, Wyrm Master, and Holy Champ w/ AL.

Wyrm Master is fun for flavor options, but generally weak. Loses to the other primary PMs due to mana problems and lack of self replication/ self healing. Turn down their rejuv costs, and change the Wyrm to a Super Tentacle and tie it to the Gnak tree.

Lich is great.

LS seem great.

Warrior types with a pet (i.e. HC, DH, NC) are basically flavor for CP. Not worth it when the Breath is matured.

[RaelCleap]

[Ravenik]

True, pets like the gremlin have their uses. Maybe more than I give credit for. Still, they don't seem worth the CP investment to me. That mana and CP is better spent elsewhere, IMO.