Pet Combat is Baaaaaaaaad

Discussion in 'Feedback' started by Rook Strife, Jul 15, 2020.

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  1. Rook Strife

    Rook Strife Avatar

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    To give you an idea how bad


    => Teleport to Rise

    Send Pet to attack first mob around the corner. It does nothing. Just sits there.

    Maneuver pet around the corner, send pet attack. It still does nothing. Out of range.

    Set pet on aggressive, nothing.


    Try to move forward a bit, the mob aggro's.

    Send the pet to attack.

    The mob has already closed half the distance before pet acknowledges attack order and is finally on him doing damage.

    The damage is not enough to draw the mob away from initial aggro and you get hit.


    Proceed to other areas, if you can't get close enough, you're tanking entire rooms while waiting for pet to run up to each mob and attack them individually.


    At the present, you can't even make a basic, straightforward pet pull half the time


    Take a wild guess what the rest of it looks like


    Seriously, how the hell can all this even be so broken? It's like you have to try
     
  2. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    All that you've noted @Rook Strife is quite true, but alas - there's more.

    We have a pet command called Stay.

    You might think that it's pretty straightforward, IE as Merriam-Webster states: "the action of halting : the state of being stopped".

    Try telling your pet to Stay when there's a mob around..... oops.
    Been that way forever, been complained about, bug reported........... but yet nothing is done to fix something so obviously flawed.

    Try buffing your pet when in a party - never-mind that your pet is standing 2 feet in front of you and that it has been selected as your target and all other party members are 20 feet behind you and you are facing your horse - and you end up spinning around and overwriting a party members buff with the one meant for your horse...

    The list goes on.
     
  3. Rook Strife

    Rook Strife Avatar

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    Hmm haven't tried that one yet

    Been having too much fun with the other commands I guess

    Follow Close means hang back a few football fields and then come sit beside me once the fightings done.

    Follow Near is sit about a foot away

    Follow Far is sit 2 feet away


    Nice to have the option whether to just shrug or stretch your arms after a fight.
     
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  4. Pawz

    Pawz Avatar

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    You can stealth and mobs won't agro you, get close enough, send the pet and if you're wearing light armor, use the Escape skill (spam it) to give the pet agro. Taming has a bit of a learning curve.
     
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  5. Rook Strife

    Rook Strife Avatar

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    LOL
     
  6. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    Part of that learning curve that you mentioned, @Pawz , is understanding that so much is situational.

    While it IS true that you can use Silent Movement or Shadow Form to "stealth" up close to mobs, you WON'T be able to go into a fight with Shield of Air, Immolation, or Elysian Illumination because any of them will immediately "un-stealth" you.

    As an example, I'm spec'd in Taming and Fire. I love the combination.
    But I can not use your strategy since I 6-stack Immolation and it lasts for 48 mins, and I can't stealth while it's active.

    Now if you are out just letting your pet kill mobs and you're not contributing to the fight, then the "stealth to get close" strategy is fine.

    Depends on what you're fighting.... situational as it were.
     
    Last edited: Jul 21, 2020
  7. AoiBlue

    AoiBlue Avatar

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    Pet commands could definitely use improvement.

    I'll agree with you guys there.

    I haven't had near the difficulty with pets you have. Of course I tend to stay away from places where the enemies can kill me with 2 or 3 hits.
     
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  8. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    Then don't use a sheep. ;)

    Get it? Baaaaaaaaad. hehe :D
     
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  9. craftymethod

    craftymethod Avatar

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    I gave up on pets when I usually only do things by myself with a fire elemental and can't have a pet out as well as my fire ele even though I only enter combat alone.

    Such a bummer
     
  10. Rook Strife

    Rook Strife Avatar

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    Might as well add something like Taming the pet in the first place to the list


    Just tamed some obsidian destroyer bears

    Rare spawn in twins foothills with additional chance to disappear / bug out and heal to full health mid-tame

    1st bear 15-20 collars 10 mins~

    2nd bear 50+ collars with GM collar recovery and the bear near death for 40+mins

    I don't even know why this junk is still installed on my computer
     
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  11. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    Remember GM collar recovery is not 100%. 120 to 140 gets you closer based on the power of the creature you are taming.
     
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  12. Gwendolyn Obscuro

    Gwendolyn Obscuro Bug Hunter

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    I feel like I am able to get aggro onto my pet better since the recent pet changes, though I will often need to take that first hit. In general I feel my piggy is very helpful when I am fighting a single boss creature. The trouble that has gotten worse with the recent changes is him listening to me when there is more than one mob around. He pretty much fights who he wants to and ignores who I tell him to attack. A recent example- We were fighting an ancient dragon and had him down to half health. At this point the pigs aggro should be pretty strong towards that dragon. But a regular yellow dragon spawned nearby and my pet decided to fight him instead, despite me directing him to continue fighting the ancient several times. This makes no sense to me because initially both dragons were attacking him and the ancient would have been doing much more damage.
     
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  13. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    Taming is one of those trees that I trained and untrained several times before just giving up on it.
    When I saw the recent 'love' (like, pets actually getting taunt capabilities) I thought I'd give it a go again. Its ...better than it was. I mean, if you can get the pet onto the mob and don't do too much damage it can tank, even boss level stuff, dragons etc. Which is great. Of course, you need a lot of rare drop artifacts (and more, if you want them legendary) to really boost your pet taunt to 'very high'. thus diminishing your own combat capabilities to focus on the pet's. When I saw that I would need 64 of each artifact for a legendary (128 now, yeah for epics?) that you sometimes get a single drop in several hours of farming, I decided taming was something I wasn't willing to invest that level of effort into, because of the many problems you mention.

    I think what you give up (gear slots, a specialization, focus pool, potentially more gear slots if you go the taming arti route), well, if you invested the same xp/gold/effort into other skills (depending on what your goals are) you'd probably still be more effective doing that. I think the skills are where they need to be, the drawbacks are sufficient to keep "everyone from doing it" but the pet management/logistics is a pain in the butt.

    For me specifically - pet perma death/loss is simply not needed - especially since you can unsummon them on a whim, the only time pets ever actually 'die' are exceptional cases, usually involving lag or disconnecting. The pets themselves aren't particularly diverse - considering the number of monster types, there's only really a fundamental difference with the 1 active skill they do (ie, the boar knocks things around). Like many things in Sota, all of the 'stats' for the pet are hidden, you can't equip them, level them, gear them, or even control when they use their skill. We don't even have a 'pet window' but have to do clunky, largely unresponsive numpad controls that seem to work about half the time and give no feedback on why they don't.

    Pet attack! Pet sits there.
    Is it too far away?
    Get closer
    Pet attack!
    Pet sits there.
    What's wrong with you? Is it hungry?
    When it does decide to go, it moseys on over, unless there's like, a blade of grass on the ground, in which case it will path weirdly.
    Its definitely a system that needs fleshing out, in terms of learnable skills to teleport pet to target, more control over pets, etc. Its another one of those systems that it seems we got to 'passably functional' and then left it. Unfortunately, I think there's a lot of core systems that are in a worse state than taming, which is at least usable and for many people, fun.
     
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  14. Rook Strife

    Rook Strife Avatar

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    And how about another for the list

    Targetting a mob for your pet to attack with a bow equipped and auto-shot on


    Option 1

    Turn auto-shot off
    Select mob and send pet attack
    Turn auto-shot back on

    Every *%&$ing Pull

    If you fight multiple enemies and want the pet on a different target

    Turn off auto-shot mid combat or you're shooting the mob when u just want the pet to attack


    Option 2

    Sheathe Weapon
    Select mob and send pet attack
    Unsheathe Weapon

    Every *%&$ing Pull


    Option 3

    Face away from target
    Target the mob and send pet attack
    Face target again



    Lets see what else is broken with taking aggro right off the bat instead of it being on your pet

    Take initial aggro -> Use escape skill to drop aggro

    Oops its range based.

    So after a ranged pull shot using escape does pretty much nothing

    Not that it works anyway. You can spam that crap 5x right beside a mob and it does nothing.




    Passably functional to who?

    Sure as hell not to anyone who has a passing interest in combat and done a reasonable amount of combat in other mmo's before

    They'll take one look at this junk and uninstall




    How the hell can such a basic thing like SEND YOUR PET IN TO ATTACK at the start of a fight STILL BE BROKEN 5 YEARS INTO THE GAME

    How the hell can targetting and auto-attack still be broken


    It's a joke
     
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  15. Dreadwhisper

    Dreadwhisper Avatar

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    Because there are dozens of players just like you who rant about 1 specific vein of the game. The dev team gives a sliver of content for each vein per release so yall heads don't explode.
     
  16. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    Oh, I just mean passably in the basest sense.
    You can tame a pet. You can name the pet. You can make it hit things. It damages the things. It takes damage. It even taunts now too and sometimes decides to use a skill randomly.
    That's passably functional.

    Is it a good system? No
    Does it need serious 'usability' enhancements? Absolutely, no dispute there. Pet attack should make your pet charge/engage the mob in say, under 1 second.
    There should be tanky pets and non tanky pets instead of just a generic taunt passive that works (kind of) on everything regardless of type.
    Tanky pets should charge/grab aggro even if you are shooting it with a few auto hits.
    There should be a pet window with buttons on it and usable skills.
    Pets should be responsive or there should be an indicator/feedback as to why (out of range, etc.) or pet attack button should dim if too far away, and so on.
    Need a keybind (maybe there's a way?) to target your pet or the game to be smart enough to know that you're trying to buff/heal the PET if you're targetting it. Either that or just add pet specific buffs to the skill tree so there's no confusion.

    If they can get all of that working, we can look at pet gear and pet skill trees and pet levelling and the rest of it and MORE pets but it needs a lot of basic refinements first, certainly.

    Like everything else in this game, they work on something until they get it to limping, and move on to something else, leaving partially finished (but kinda usable) systems as the expected norm.
     
  17. Rook Strife

    Rook Strife Avatar

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    Riiiiiight

    Basic functioning combat a specific vein of the game


    Maybe instead of adding new pets month after month

    They should have checked if you could actually use them
     
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  18. Rook Strife

    Rook Strife Avatar

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    Yea I know

    Not like I expected great things either lol


    Would have thought we would be able to initiate a basic pet attack by now though without encountering a whole pile of junk

    Guess not
     
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  19. Dreadwhisper

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    You just made my point. Devs trying to appease every specific portion of the game every release doesn't fix any of the problems.
     
  20. Rook Strife

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    None of that is any excuse for things being this broken


    It's common sense

    If you put a combat pet into the game, people are going to expect to be able to perform the basic functions with it in combat.
     
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