Tamer Input Requested on pets that use "DEMI" spell

[alk760]

I'm out of the tamer loop it seems but what i'm seeing is not good.

Pets dealing half of a targets max health at the beginning of the fight sure will destroy a mongbat but what about when they cut Szavetra or OMGHALP health in half? because I remember them doing this and was why I said a strong no to that ability being on a tamed creature.

It's not about killing Drow dragons it's about what happens everywhere else.

As far as I now True boss mobs will destroy any pet. I remember this because we had a discussion on how Tamer should not be the best build here.

The Zoo of pets I used to have broke every rule. I really wish you were available during that time when I was trying to explain what was going on.

With all of the nerfs to what we can now tame it makes no sense to remove certain mobs due to them being too strong only to put in new ones of equal caliber.

None of the Blackrocks had that "DEMI" ability but they were still deemed to strong.

Tradian Spawn was deemed too strong.

Tamables that Spawned with the new AI Traits were way way to strong.

 All of which were removed from the tamable list.

Even with all the new restrictions and removals from the tamable list taming still had it's share of really strong pets.  none of which I see being used to date because nothing will compare to that Worgs attack.

I have not used the New New Drow Dragon but i'm sure it's stronger than any of the Dragons that were removed from the tamable list prior.

 I'm mainly looking for input from

Crossbreed

Tris

Bran Stark

But all others please share your thoughts.

[Tracina]

I don't have a Drow Dragon, so I can't speak on their abilities. However, I do have a Worg. It does well, but it's not impervious to damage, it still does die a lot. I did the Ancient Incantation quest today and my Worg died fighting the mobs at the boss. So, Sure, my Worg is tough and it can fight well, but it still isn't a game breaker that allows me to mow through all the content. I cannot run Atlantis without dying in about 0.6 seconds. My pet seems to not be much help there.

I did the Island of Dr Mureau, and the worg helped, but it still took me almost 20 minutes to kill the boss - Lots of Healing and Lots of Casting...

I don't think the Worgs are as over powered as imagined. Sure, they're strong, but I don't feel they are overly strong to the point of breaking the game. There are areas I don't go because I know I won't survive. If my worg was OP, I'd go to these spots all the time?

The Worg is a tough pet, but it's also very difficult to get. It took 2 other players helping to get mine.

[Bran]

I can't say much about big pets tha used to be here before me but heard some were very too strong. I also heard some were not to be tamed but popped up because more than one admin was spawning stuff.

I had the old style dragons and WW when I started and if they tried the bosses they just became ghost dust to drag around. It was just no fun using a pet to just hunt lower monsters all the time. I do like the new ai pets. They seem to have different reasons. Crossbreed knows them better than me. Some are poisoner some are mage some melee some are archers. Some are weaker and take 3 slots but some are stronger and take five slots. I never tried running with two because im too clumbsy for that. I have maybe four of them but use the worg because i like his look and I can ride him. He cannot shrink so that is sometime inconvenient but mounting him helps that. The revenant and lion are also real good and have different tactic. Ya my worg is a good fighter but if I don't stay with him he is dead a lot. At least he makes a fight with big stuff possible b ut not all time. Thank the gods for the veterinary skill fix cause those pet potions were not easy to keep supplied.

I have a drow dragon fully tamed and I think he is my strongest pet. It took a long time to get him and several full days to train him but he is my big boy. I can ride him and he can shrink but I use worg more because drow dragon is big and in my wayy a lot. I have not used him on many Bosses yet so can't say the result yet. I do use him on the Drow gardians hunting for eggs. He make life in drow land safer but I still die many times. It took me weeks to sort out best tricks for Drow Guardians. Now if I keep him well healed we work good even with me dying a lot. It possible he is too strong but not by tons. Not for drow guardian anyway. I will try him on other bosses more and find out what happens.

All big pets are tricky and hard to get solo but i think that's good. I suppose we will see some change to tamers and other skill setups over time but people should should make a tamer today and try it before complain about it.

[alk760]

Thank you for your input on the two pets but what about that bugged drain/DEMI attack?

When they hit a mob and take away half it's health this is my main concern.
If you pet is not tanky and dies it does not justify it being able to deal a 20k+ hit.

This is mainly concerning the Worg's attacks because I have not seen a drow use the DEMI but anything that can do this needs to be axed.



Not trying to get any pets removed just the ability that we deemed overpowered years ago.

[Amairgen]

Okay call me old and out of touch (or faulting of memory) but I do not know what 'DEMI' refers to.

Anyway . . FYI

These are the new pet types (well not so new any more):
- Smilodon 'lion'
- Sleipnir 'troglodyte'
- Skelter 'skeletal dragon'
- Worg - 'cu sidhe'
- Wendigo 'harrower'
- Impundulu 'rend'
- Anemoi 'silvani'
- Seilenoi 'satyr'

In addition to the above there was more recently a number of edits to the Drow Dragon pet because it needed to be stronger than these newly added ones.

Now . . just so you know:

1) None of these pet changes has anything that gives any of them the power to insta drain 20k hits from anything at any time. That just does not happen.

2) Yes they do have special AI and special abilities. Those differ from one to the next. One is good against OMGHALP if you can find out which one *smiles - hint - it is not a Drow or a Worg*

3) The Worg keeps getting mentioned (maybe because it has become popular) but it cannot hit any harder than the others. Looking inside its AI . . . if a monster is at greater than 50% health then it has a 5% chance to drop their health by 10%. So if a monster has 60,000 Max Hits and it has more than 30,000 hits remaining, A Worg (and the others) has a 5% chance to drop its hits by 10%. After that things normalize.

If you are seeing anything different it is because of other factors (multiple players with multiple pets and/or multiple summons all attacking with Melee and Spells hitting close to another). If the 5% chance on initial drains is over powered I am happy to drop it to 1% or drop the % damage or both.

I appreciate feed back on this (including the Drow Dragon) for the good of us all.

Thanks

[Bran]

Aug 29, 2021 7:30:44 GMT -8 alk760 said:

Thank you for your input on the two pets but what about that bugged drain/DEMI attack?

When they hit a mob and take away half it's health this is my main concern.
If you pet is not tanky and dies it does not justify it being able to deal a 20k+ hit.

This is mainly concerning the Worg's attacks because I have not seen a drow use the DEMI but anything that can do this needs to be axed.

Not trying to get any pets removed just the ability that we deemed overpowered years ago.

Hi Alk. I dont know where you got this idea from. My worg dont do damage like you say worgs do. Not that I ever saw.

You and one of my guildmates joined me a couple nights ago to visit the crystal palace. By way Amairgen somethig buggy in there cause at end the boss kept spawning. 

Anyway there was me with my worg chomping along with Alk and his summon deofol and and all three of us spaming EVs and casting. We all dies more than once. I can tell you I pretty much drained my free gold supplies using selfres.  I tried to keep my worg as a meat sheild for the rest of us while we attacked but my poor worg got killed a lot (maybe over 15 times) on that adventure. 

I just dont see what the fuss is about. Sure he can smack dragons in Dubious if I am careful but who can't. Sorry friend. Just sayin.






He is good and so are others. To be fair I need to test my Drow more to comment.

[Amairgen]

Okay . . So on a closer look at the Worg's AI (and to correct my previous information) I find this:

The 5% chance to drain hits applies to Players not creatures. Further into the script I see how the drain works on creatures.

Against 'creatures' the chance to drain hits is 10% (not 5%) and works like this:
If the enemy is a BaseCreature . . and
if the enemy is within 2 tiles . . and
if the enemy has more than 50% of its Max Hitpoints left . . and
if the damage chance is equal to or less than 10% . . then
the worg (and others) can drop the enemy's Hitpoints by 10%

So against a monster with 50,000 Max Hit Points:
at 50,000 it has a 10% chance to lose 5,000 hits
at 40,000 it has a 10% chance to lose 4,000 hits
at 30,000 it has a 10% chance to lose 3,000 hits
at 25,000 and less the special ability does not apply

Now it gets interesting because with hit dexterity these new pets run the 10% chance fairly often so you could see a creature's hits dropping fairly fast during the early part of the battle.

I do not mind these pets having a chance to drop a creatures initial hits (and I am glad it is not throughout the entire health of the creature) but if the ability gets used it should not appear so rapid that it looks like all one big drop.

I think everyone could agree on that and I plan to play with it. I do not see this as a 'Nerf'. I see it as an adjustment for it to fall in line with what was intended.

As always I am wide open to input . . just please keep it constructive and up beat.

Cheers

[alk760]

I watched a Worg half a Master Tormenters health in a second. a mob that I can barley scratch 50 damage from.

Seeing that happen it reminded me of the 2 Dragons I was testing that used a similar attack.
The 2 were normal dragons but had spawned with 2400 health and a new set of abilities.

They did it to every mob they encountered right away. OMGHALP, Szavetra,The Twin plague beasts in Tartarus Wrong,the Red Ancient Wyrm in Avarice. Arch Fiends in Shiatan and everything in between.
They even got a few amazing blows in on the Sinifil of challenge tower but Sinifil still 2 shot them.
All in all it took the challenge away from 99% of the mobs here.

Now I know the Worg is nothing in comparison but it still has that attack.

Master Tormentors drop over 10keach. a Tamer with Worg can kill one in just over a minute  while anything else will have to wear it down close to 10+ minutes.

[Crossbreed]

Some of my input on tames in general..

If anything, the frequency of this ability could be decreased a bit so it doesn't happen too quickly, but the frequency varies. There is an RNG chance it happens quickly, but there's also a chance it happens very slowly, it'll vary per fight. Additionally, the ability does become useless at half health. With my build, in any real, difficult fights I'm doing the majority of the damage, not my pet. They're just a meat shield and typically die all the time. A pure tamer is hard pressed to keep their pet alive against a majority of any "end-game" boss monsters, and even despite the taming changes it's remained that way. 

I don't remember the quest name anymore, but Amairgen put in a super duper quest not terribly long ago and watched me do it. I'm sure he saw my Worg die over and over and I'm sure he saw me leave it dead after a certain point, because some of the mobs you just can't keep a pet alive against without sacrificing all of your personal damage output (If you're a mage/tamer or archer/tamer, etc). The fact I'm leaving it dead should speak volumes about how it's not overtuned when the stakes are at their highest.

Also, in harder content areas it's very possible (and easy to fall victim to if not careful) for these new pets to be overwhelmed. Additionally, they're not the best at fighting groups of enemies at a time and will die rapidly to groups of strong mobs, as there's no way you can outheal the damage they take and they won't kill things fast enough if there are multiple strong mobs around them. The ability is strong in specific instances, but useless in others and isn't an automatic solution to any fight.

Why Worg?

I think Worg is mentioned the most because it's the most used, but also because it's the bulkiest and safest option among the others. It's pretty much a resilient meat shield with a nice bonus of cutting enemy hp against any harder boss content up to a point, then becoming just a pure tank. My personal preference has always been to find defensive or tanky pets anyways, because my damage comes from myself and my spells. Worg also boasts some extra bonuses like mortal wounding, which is helpful when we're trying to finish off a self-healing mob.

The Role of Pets

I've grown accustomed to my pet being a guardian angel of sorts and a tank, but on this server I'm of the opinion that we fight with our pets rather than having them do the heavy lifting. I rather enjoy the fact that my pet is doing half the work while I do the other half, it feels like a real partnership in that regard.

My main concerns would boil down to the following two things, personally:

1. Pets in tough fights become rather useless after the 50% mark is hit if they're impossible to keep alive. Being a pure tamer is pretty rough post 50% against stronger bosses, but I don't think this server should necessarily accommodate "pure" taming with a 1200 skill cap. As it is currently, there's a decent balance between you and your pet doing half the work, roughly, on fights. If you do this well, your pet survives with low health and you take the enemy down. It feels rather good to pull this off.

2. If my pet becomes a liability to keep alive or a net dps loss to repeatedly res, I don't res it. This can already happen because of how the ability they have works, and their dps once an enemy reaches 50% hp gets much lower. I agree that pets should not rapidly chunk enemies to 50%, but it seems to take a decent bit of time to happen a majority of time with some high-roll RNG instances where it happens quickly. The rate of this ability could be lowered if we feel it's too much, but it seems others are not seeing this happen. 

Also, I'd prefer consistent dps over burst damage, personally. But I can discuss that in more detail when I'm back as well.

I'm willing to discuss the power of these pets in more detail but I have to go pick up pizza, be back in a bit.  

[alk760]

Thank you all for participating in this study.
real solid inputs from Tracina, Bran Stark and Crossbreed.

I was unaware it was more of an RNG attack because well it was instant on every mob I encountered.
I was unaware the whole time my dragon was hitting 5 times a second because I only ever saw 1 attack.

Still the effect was always the same 50k became 25k after 1 of those attacks.

Again I do not want more tamable's removed we've already lost some nice ones.

I just want some acknowledgement you also see a mobs health drop to half at the beginning of a fight.

[Crossbreed]

Aug 29, 2021 14:46:09 GMT -8 alk760 said:

Thank you all for participating in this study.
real solid inputs from Tracina, Bran Stark and Crossbreed.

I was unaware it was more of an RNG attack because well it was instant on every mob I encountered.
I was unaware the whole time my dragon was hitting 5 times a second because I only ever saw 1 attack.

Still the effect was always the same 50k became 25k after 1 of those attacks.

Again I do not want more tamable's removed we've already lost some nice ones.
I just want some acknowledgement you also see a mobs health drop to half at the beginning of a fight.

Sometimes, if the RNG hits well. Other times it can take a while. I've seen it happen quickly on occasion, but most often it takes a bit for the enemy to drop to 50%. If you have really bad luck, it can take quite a while as well.

[Bran]

Some Drow Dragon info. I took my drow dragon to Atlantis first time today and it was a fun ride. Took 3.5 hours to work the dungeon. Here what i found.

Drow dragons are afraid of OMGHALP and run away so thats no help. He was ok but no insta killer on the rest. I died four times and he died 3 time. He would have die more but sometime he swarmed by little stuff and I got resssed to heal before he died again.

After 3.5 hours we walked away with this loot:
40,986 Gold
17,775 Tradium
3 Variable Rug deeds
2 Wall Safe deeds
1 Guillotine deed
1 Coffin deed
11 Skill balls
3 Stat Balls
26 Tradium Blood
40 Powder of Translocation
2 Port Sextants
231 Magic Jewels for SC
3 Race Change Tokens
204 Chanting Stones
5 Drow Rings
8 Arties
2 Elven Invisibility Robes

If any guildmates need any please let me know. I just storing it all away for now.

[alk760]

Nice Haul!

Drow Dragon seems legit now compared to what it used to be.

If they are not using that drain they are not an issue IMO.

Drow used to be of no use in Atlantis but back then they were weaker than greater dragons so this is good news.

PS: I referred to that Drain attack the only way I could by calling it a DEMI Spell.

DEMI is from the Final Fantasy Series and it would instantly remove 25 to 50% of an enemy's health.

Sorry for any confusion.