Combat pet's leveled skills

Hey all, in the most recent livestream it was mentioned that part of the combat pet overhaul (at least in Episode 2 or close to it anyway) will change it to where leveling your summon skill will unlock certain abilities for your pet, some of which you can even use on your hotbar! This is just me building an rough concept of what it could look like (I'll be using the basic Skeletal Footman, Chaos Daemon, the Wolf, and the Bear for this) , and if it helps out the devs ( @Chris ), all the better!

Skeletal Footman Skills:

• Level 1: None. Has only standard attacks.
• Level 15: Gains a passive taunt ability.
• Level 30: Gains a skill that temporarily intercepts damage directed at the summoner. Summoner may put this on their hotbar.
• Level 50: Gains a passive rend on its attacks.
• Level 70: Gains a new skill that interrupts and knocks down its target. Summoner may put this on their hotbar.
• Level 100: Skill passively summons an additional, but much less powerful, Skeletal Footman.
• Level 130: Gains a skill that taunts and siphons health from all nearby enemies for a certain amount of time. Summoner may place this on their hotbar.
• Level 160: Summon skill passively summons a third, but much less powerful, Skeletal Footman.
• Level 200: Gains a skill that casts an improved Death Shield on itself and all nearby allies. This Shield heals for 75% of the damage taken, increases Death Attunement by 40%, but lowers healing received by 95%. Summoner may put this skill on their hotbar.

Chaos Daemon Skills:

• Level 1: None. Only standard melee and Daemon Chaos attacks.
• Level 15: Gains a passive Chaotic Shield effect every minute
  
• Level 30: Gains a new skill where the Daemon leaps into the air and slams into the ground, dealing AoE Chaos damage and knocking enemies down. Summoner may put this ability on their hotbar.
  
• Level 50: Gains a passive aura that improves Chaos skills effectiveness for all allies.
• Level 70: Gains a new skill that causes the Daemon to charge at it's target, dealing damage to anything within its path. Summoner may place this on their hotbar.
  
• Level 100: When struck in combat, may use a special version of Chaotic Clone. This clone will use all unlocked Daemon skills for reduced damage for a short amount of time. The original Daemon will stealth and regenerate health passively when this happens.
  
• Level 130: Gains a skill that will inflict a penalty (or grant a buff) to any target within range. Player characters targeted may also be inflicted with the Confusion or Focus Damage debuff. Summoner may place this on their hotbar.
• Level 160: Daemon Chaos is upgraded to Greater Daemon Chaos, dealing AoE damage and debuffs while also granting a random boon (or debuff) to its summoner when used.
• Level 200:Gains a skill that empowers the Daemon into a Greater Daemon of Chaos, enhancing its health, damage, armor and the effectiveness of its skills for a short time (The daemon grows in size for this effect). In PvE, the Greater Daemon will randomly teleport anyone within its range to a random place. In PvP, the Greater Daemon will disable one random enemy skill for a minute before it disables another. The Disable effect lasts for 30 seconds. Using this ability may lower your virtue!

Tamed Wolf Skills:

• Level 1: None. Standard attacks only.
• Level 15: Gains a passive that increases it's and its nearby allies damage by a certain percentage depending on how many allies are nearby.
• Level 30: Gains a new skill that has the wolf attempt to knockdown its target. Tamer may place this on their hotbar.
• Level 50: Gains a passive that adds a chance for the Wolf to bleed its target.
• Level 70: Gains a new skill that heals the summoner if the Wolf is within a certain range. The Will not attack while performing this skill. Tamer may place this ability on their hotbar.
• Level 100: Gains a passive that alters part of its damage to inflict piercing damage, ignoring armor.
• Level 130: Gains a new skill where the Wolf howls, mesmerizing any target within a certain distance. Tamer may place this on their hotbar.
• Level 160: Gains a new passive where the Wolf inflicts massive damage when attacking a target from behind.
• Level 200: Gains a new skill where the Wolf pounces on its target, knocking them down for a long duration and inflicting a large penalty to their damage resistance. The wolf may not move away from the target while they are knocked down, and deals reduced damage, but automatically bleeds the target. Tamer may slot this on their hotbar.

Tamed Bear Skills:

• Level 1: None, only standard attacks.
• Level 15: Gains a passive taunt ability for its attacks.
• Level 30: Gains a new skill that the Bear tries to knockdown its target for a short duration. Tamer may place this on their hotbar.
• Level 50: Gains a new passive that automatically intercepts a small portion of the damage its Tamer is dealt if they are within a certain distance.
• Level 70: Gains a new skill where the Bear slams the ground in front of it, stunning, taunting, and dealing damage to any target in front of it. Tamer may place this on their hotbar.
• Level 100: Gains a new passive where the Bear may cleanse a debuff from itself every few seconds.
• Level 130: Gains a new skill where the Bear roars, taunting and confusing all nearby enemies.
• Level 160: Gains a new passive where nearby allies gains a passive bonus to their Damage Resistance.
  
• Level 200: Gains a new ability that can only be activated when the Tamer drops to 50% or less health. Teleports the Bear to the Tamers location, increasing it's damage and damage resistance by a large amount and forcing all targets within a certain radius to attack the bear. The Tamer gains a massive buff to damage resistance and slowly regenerates up to 25% of their health overtime while this is active. Any new target that attacks the Tamer while this is active causes the Bear to teleport to the Tamer and perform the taunt action again.

What do you guys think? For each type of combat pet, I tried to play to each pets own strengths and make them utterly unique in what they do. Would love some feedback on this.

 

Nobody is going to spend the 16 billion experience required to get summoned to 200. Highest ability should be maybe at 120 or something. I like the general idea and I can see the devs doing something similar. I would like to see a toggle stance that greatly increases the pets combat strength while diminishing my own characters damage capability as a trade off. Pet does 50% more damage, gains innate magic resist, but your attacks do -75% damage. It be a good way to keep the balance between pet or player doing the damage. Right now pets are not a primary source of damage, they are more like support. I want to be able to have my pet be my main damage and my character be the support, instead of the other way around.

 

The reason i went to 200 with this idea is to make those levels not feel like "dead levels" to players. I want to give everyone a reason to level past 120, and not feel like it's a waste of their time or xp. Currently, there is no point in leveling nearly any skill past 140. The exception to that is taming, as the Ancient Obsidian Bear requires 137 in taming for a 2% chance to get it, and nobody knows how much taming the upcoming wyverns will need either. I want to recapture that kind of incentive for leveling for the summons (and all the other skills, but I know more about the summoned creatures).

As to your idea of "channeling" power to your put at the cost of your own damage, I really love the idea! I even put it in my Summoning Skill Tree concept. It's a tree concept that I really hope they implement on top of the summons learning skills at certain levels, or at least some of it anyway. Appreciate the feedback!

 

I don't think it was ever intended players would get 140+. 16 billion experience is what is required for level 200. If my math is correct, 1 billion experience is equal to 1,000 million experience. So you would have to run tiers roughly 16,000 times, and lets assume that at double xp, It takes a half hour to do with the average PUG group, your looking at close to 8000 hours of Tiers grinding or 333 days ALMOST a year spent grinding tiers to reach level 200. Almost certainly impossible to reach under current exp metrics, and even if it was, for one ability it would not be worth it.

Hopefully 140 taming will the be highest ever required to tame a pet, as of right now there is probably less then 5 people in the game with that much taming or even close to it. Besides whats the point for someone like me whose a relatively new player? I am GM on almost everything in the taming tree after a month of play minus specialization and pet Resurrection. My guild leader has taming 130+ why should I bother sinking all my precious points in taming when I can just have her tame me a wyvern? Even if I wasn't in a guild with a high end tamer, you can bet they will be sold on the market for gold.

 

It's not just Taming that you have to level past 140, it's also Combat Training and Summoning. Both of these skills increase the maximum level of your pet. Also, if you speak to most experience tamers, they all seems to agree that the tameable Wyvern will most likely require 150 taming. I agree with you in that I hope they don't, but I wouldn't mind if they do as it's a new goal to shoot for.

If it was never intended for players to go past 140, then why can players do so and why should Tamer's only get that kind of incentive? Again, my goal for this is to make going past level 100 for summons (which currently isn't worth getting them past 60 unless it's the Death Summons or Water Elemental) actually worth it with these skill additions. I am hoping that in the future, that the devs will add better grinding spots and levels past 140 that reward players for doing so, which is what I'm trying to do here. Otherwise, there is very little reason for levels 141-200 to exist at all. It might be something that is worth asking the devs about in the next telethon.

 

There needs to be some pet actions that can be learned separate from the pet type, as well. Positioning is important.

• Flank: Your pet retreats 20 meters ahead of you, then turns to fight your target. This will help with getting pets behind the target, which will be extremely important if something like the Wolf gets backstab.
• Heel: Your pet moves to your side. You can then have them attack from there, or just sit and stay. =)